On Site in New York: Designing a 21st-Century Biker Jacket with Asher Levine

Among all objects of design, our clothes are the most universal and intimate. Like other kinds of design, fashion thrives on productive tensions between form and function, automation and craftsmanship, standardization and customization, universality and self-expression, and pragmatism and utopian vision. It exists in the service of others, and it can have profound consequences—social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental.
Fashion as Design focuses on a selection of more than 70 garments and accessories from around the world, ranging from kente cloth to jeans to 3D-printed dresses. Through these garments, we’re going to look closely at what we wear, why we wear it, how it’s made, and what it means. You’ll hear directly from a range of designers, makers, historians, and others working with clothing every day—and, in some cases, reinventing it for the future. Studio visits, interviews, and other resources introduce the history and development of each garment and their changing uses, meanings, and impact over time.
Course Learning Objectives:
Develop critical tools to appreciate and contextualize fashion design—from everyday clothing to couture garments—through many different perspectives.
Trace the history, development, and impact of garments over time, and explore how they may be reinvented.
Investigate garments through multiple lenses including politics, identity, and economics.
Understand more about the lifecycle of clothing, from its design and production to its marketing, distribution, and consumption.
Better comprehend the choices you make about fashion with respect to the visual language of dress, individual and collective identities, and issues such as labor practices, sustainability, and body politics.

审阅

R

I really recommend everyone to take this course! I have learned so much throughout these 7 weeks and I now have a different perception about many different things! Thank you

ME

Jul 16, 2019

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

This course was an amazing experience. Every lecture, every video an the interviews were like complements to my past knowledge about fashion. Thanks to MoMa and Coursera!

从本节课中

Expression

What we wear and how we wear it can communicate messages, create group identification, borrow and remake existing styles, or subvert a garment’s traditional associations. While choosing and wearing clothes is an act of personal expression, it is also a response to many of the topics addressed in the preceding weeks of this course. In this final week, we look at the ways in which clothing allows us to feel connected to others and to stand out.

教学方

Paola Antonelli

Senior Curator, Department of Architecture & Design, and Director, Department of Research & Development

Michelle Millar Fisher

Curatorial Assistant

Stephanie Kramer

Research Assistant

Anna Burckhardt

Curatorial Assistant

脚本

[NOISE] People come to me because they know I'm going to create something that looks unique, it's going to be sexy, and then it's going to exude this powerful element. Which is why I've designed a lot for musicians and people who want that rock star look. And a biker jacket is imbued with all of those sexy, masculine features, right? Whenever I design a new biker jacket, I draw a classic biker jacket, and then I begin to take those biker jacket details and manipulate them. With the MoMA biker jacket, I wanted to go really beyond that. >> Are you going to put it on right here? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Hm? >> Not on the mannequin. >> We're going to feed it in so. >> Yeah, careful because this. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It doesn't have that long of a run right now. >> Wow, this is really exciting that this is the moment where- >> Yeah, captured on camera. >> Yeah. Stick a bitch on [LAUGH]. >> The idea for this prototype actually came about two and a half years ago when we were talking to him about designing a motorcycle jacket where you could signal based on the motorcycle jacket itself using animations to do that. Someone will be able to plug this system into their bike. A little wireless dongle, essentially, that would plug into their motorcycle's computer system. Much like any cars kind of operated by a computer now. And via Bluetooth, it would be able to send to the jacket when it's turning left or right, whether it's breaking, if there is a car or an object in your blind spot, and all sorts of different animations. This is going to be sort of the base of the entire jacket. And Asher has designed multiple pieces actually to sit on top of it, that'll diffuse in a very nice looking way and it won't look like the terminator's cousin at that point. >> Wow! Really, really good. So that's going to be more like the, what? Okay, I mean there's still a lot of work to do. >> [LAUGH] >> But you know what Tyson? See, look, it's not really coming through so we may have to make a panel of LEDs that go right here for the lapel. >> Yeah, for the lapel as well. >> because it should integrate with that, right? When it comes to a biker jacket, there is the look but then there is the utility, right? You need flexibility to move but you also need protection. So the skin base, which is based off of the fractals of butterfly eggs, is made up of two different types of polymers. One that's stretchier and one that's harder. So typically you're used to seeing biker jackets with big pieces of armor on it. However, what if we brought the size of the armor down and attached it to a flexible base. You can flex, but then you also have these little microscopic armor plates. Then when you combine that with the lighting technology, then that's another layer of utility. You are communicating with other drivers on the road of your presence and where you're going, if you're stopping. All of those things that we're used to communicating while we're driving. You see someone putting their blinker on, you can see them blinking. They're putting their brakes on 200 feet in front of me, because their car is going red. But now, when we brake the jacket will go red. So it's kind of using these communicating archetypes of driving and merging it with a design aesthetic. It looks so good. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> The diffuse is pretty good. >> Yeah, it's all hanging on the LEDs here because- >> And we're not even going to see that. >> So that's why you're seeing that. >> Yeah. >> It will work as a shoulder [INAUDIBLE]. >> Yeah, yeah, the shoulder, and then we're going to to have shoulder elements that have the animations in it. >> Yeah, the only way if we're going to see it are the scale [INAUDIBLE]. >> The material fabrication is completely futuristic. The silhouette though plays with the asymmetric lapel. But we rounded it out. The whole jacket is kind of round. And I love to accentuate the shoulder blades. And I use that as an opportunity to house our diffusion lights. But also I think it's so sexy to accentuate the arm and the elbow. So we added these like extended harness-like patterns that diffuse the light as well. So bending the silhouette, what is sexy? Those are all questions that we think about when we're designing. See this front? [SOUND] This is going to be translucent. So when something falls outside the boundary of what people perceive what something can be, that's when you push the understanding of anything. So for fashion, right, when people go what is that made out of or what is the silhouette? It's expanding their idea of what it can be, and that's why I like this whole prototype is because we're given this opportunity to expand people's understanding of what can a biker jacket be and what can a biker jacket do and how can that change?